Tuesday, June 09, 2009

How to use up lots of paper

We voted on Sunday with about half of the population of the village who were eligible to vote. It was Olivier’s first turn to cast his vote. The thing that annoys me about French elections is the amount of paper involved. A pile of lists of each party’s candidates is laid out on a table, you then pick up a list from each pile with an envelope before you go into a booth to put your chosen list into the envelope. The rest goes into a bin. I refuse to pick up a National Front list.

The week before the election every person of voting age receives an envelope with all of the same lists and a paper about each party in it. The idea is you can take your lists with you if you want to. The paper gets recycled and the envelopes are the kind that can be used again. I prefer the English system BUT I remember that my voting ticket had a number on it. They could check who you voted for if they wanted to. d

One of Rob's colleagues was running as a candidate for the Royalist Party. There party was too small to have lists distributed everywhere so you could download them if you wanted to. Would you believe this? They only had women’s names on their list because it is obligatory and most of them were a name only as the party didn’t really expect to get enough votes to have a representative at the European parliament.

5 comments:

I know someone who is the finest swordsman in France, of course, but I wonder who is the rightful king (or queen) of France? Maybe they could organise the appearance of a magical sword in a stone. Or a magical bread knife in a stale brioche. Or something. That'd sort them out. Or not.

*looks down* today's word is 'wammins', which sounds very Sword In The Stone

I realised a long time ago that the voting slips are numbered like raffle tickets here in England.

We have a voting number which is unique to you. Say mine is AY102, this number is written on the counterfoil of your voting slip by the official before tearing off the bit you vote with. So voting paper number "rt4789" is issued to "AY102"! As you say they can sort out all the people who voted against the ruling party after the count and hey presto, they have you name and address from the voters list!

This why I don't vote anymore. Secret ballot? Bah!

Tony - Any mark on the paper other than the cross renders the paper null and void by law. So you automatically cancelled your vote by scribbling out the number! They've got you all ways.

Dru: So you know Olivier! He only did it for a year but I enjoyed it because they had a mezzanine where the parents could watch in safety. There are a few pretenders to the throne and Baroness Emma Orczy added something of interest too in "The Uncrowned King". Perhaps we're better off without...

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About Me

I'm interested in a lot of things. In recent years I've been selling old French postcards and love researching the history behind them. Sometimes I'm inspired to write a short story about my postcards.

Life begins at 40 but it really gets going in the 50s, then on with the sweet 60s!